The Whorl

Game 15 - The Ancestor

2,940 XP = Total: 26,040

3

JAN/18

Oh Goddess, black-feathered serpent, Your blessings continue to afflict me, temper me, test me, and improve me. Your servant, Black Fang, thanks you for all the unforseen ways in which your quiet intervention has led me ever-closer to my goal of freeing my people, your children, from their false path, their indenture to an Empire that should by right of history and conquest be our enemy.

It is true that I am an abomination, that your pure design has been tainted by generations of foul breeding and magic into the nearly-human form I am currently cursed with. But despite the pain and weakness of my birth I aspire to the power and grace of the pure-bloods, your original creation, and I thank you for permitting me to meet so many of them living in pure service to your original design even after so many centuries.

When I was captured by those hobgoblins and their ilk I knew that this was another of your tribulations, but that if I could survive it, I would be strengthened. I had no reason to expect that your divine sister might also take an interest in my quest and send a powerful party of outlanders to free me. They apparently purchased me from the creatures with a sword forged in Civilized lands and when I looked upon the one they named Vinihata I knew him immediately as one who had experienced Your divine touch to a far greater degree than most. I am still contemplating the vision that briefly came over me when I laid eyes upon him. I thank you.

They were a strange group. Vinihata bore tattoos honoring you and your sister, and he was the one who held most of my attention, but the Traveler upon the Great River and the Devotee of the Dreamer were interesting as well. They had a druid among them as well as a strange man obsessed with monkeys who they called an "academic", a man seemingly useless, but who Vinihata assured me would be of aid in our journey. There was a diminutive woman who I at first overlooked but whose name I immediately recognized from the lips of the Empire's emissaries to Xin: Tavi the Terrible. The tales of her exploits are truly legendary, and I can see the wisdom of her companions in keeping her power cloaked until needed. Finally, there was a goblin guide and tracker who vanished utterly from the party and was never mentioned again after I was freed from the hobgoblins. I begin to suspect he was never quite real but rather an illusory construct of the high-elf's.

As strange and diverse as this group was, I knew them immediately as the instruments of your will, a source of great tribulation that, if I perservere, will lead me to my goal, and indeed, they confirmed that their task was also the destruction of the Great Work to which my people have been indentured for generations. I told them what I knew, as a favored son of Xin. I spoke of the Changer, the god who has stolen the prayers of your children. I spoke of the foul bargain struck between the Elders and the Emperor. I impressed upon them the value of my quest to find your avatar among those of your children who stay true to you.

They agreed to divert their travel to accompany me on my quest. It was then that the strange man Vikram showed his worth, seeking to capture specific monkeys, he led us right into a patrol of the Pure. Vinihata and I triumphed in a Trial of Champions and we were welcomed into the village where your servant, Smiling Bite, spoke of the ancient ways of our people. Although she had nothing but disdain for the weak, human-like body I was born with, she acknowledged that Your ways will strengthen even one such as me, and I was heartened.

She summoned forth the avatar, the black-feathered serpent, who spoke to us of our respective goals and gave to us a blessing of deception that will permit our infiltration into the Malison City and the Great Work beneath the Waves. She then graced me with a vision of her true form, a sinuous feathered and flying serpent, glorious, black feathers scintillating in the new dawn's sun. It was cause for tears of joy.

Your trials continue to guide us. Now we approach the ancient ruins of Xin where my companions seek initial infiltration. I must stay without, for I would be immediately recognized as an exile who has rejected the Compact. Based on their information, we will use the blessing your avatar has given us and bring ruin to those who would turn their faces from their goddess and creator.